The Resilience of Alien Chess

Note: This was written 5 years ago, in 2020 during the pandemic. Everyone was navigating huge changes at work and at home. But it only resonated more with the years and became my most read and re-shared work post ever. In '25, with AI and beyond it may apply to all tech, many industries, and maybe even at home.

In just a few weeks is my 13th “Face-a-versary”. It’s hard to survive 13 years at Facebook (ed note: now 18). Sure, there’s been so much excitement, so much passion, so much learning, and so much success for the company and our teams. But there’s also been so much stress, and so much change, much of it sudden and painful. In my time here I’ve experienced the company grow 160x, people coming and going, infinite re-orgs, failed projects, tech shifts, criticism, regulation, societal issues. I’ve been deep under water more times than I can count.

What enabled me to keep working on our mission all these years was a mindset shift.

I was in my early years as a manager, and I was getting crushed by the constant flow of changes — and with the massive added burden of helping the people I support through them. So I tried to get ahead of all the coming changes through the cunning use of strategy. I told myself: “now I’m playing Facebook Chess!”. I focused on thinking many moves ahead, understanding how people and pieces interact with each other. I worked on beautiful, pristine, elaborate plans A and plans B.

As you might guess, my grand visions of the future never panned out how I imagined them. You know the drill: There’s an org change. Regulators issue a surprise ruling. The headcount granted isn’t as big as hoped. You got a new manager. A product that was a sure bet suddenly flattens out. Lots of unexpected setbacks — and it was demoralizing and annoying.

So I tried to double down. My solution: be yet more strategic. Let’s think more months and more moves ahead. Let’s understand the pieces and the people better. Let’s expand the game tree (if they do this, then my manager will say this, then: aha, I’ll just go here! Checkmate!). 4D Chess.

I still got crushed. It doesn’t work. So after some sulking I had a realization: I was “playing” an opponent much bigger than myself. No matter how much of a grandmaster you are, you can’t out-plan Facebook. You can’t out-plan the world and how connected we are to it. We move and pivot so quickly because our mission needs it; or the world needs us to; or because our industry changes the fastest. Just look at what wonderful 2020 has required from ICs, and from leaders. If you are trying to play grandmaster chess while trying to lead here, you’re playing the wrong game.

You’re not playing chess: you’re playing Alien Chess.

This is how this game actually works: you sit at a table with a chess board, making your fancy chess moves. Then suddenly, a little green Alien swoops in. The Alien takes your board away and swaps in a new one -- where stuff is changed. Sometimes, you become the opposite color pieces. Sometimes, it’s all the same but your single most key piece is missing (argh). Sometimes, it’s just a totally new board. So you hunker down and play that one for a while, and then the Alien whisks it away and gives you a new board again.

The Alien takes many different forms. Just think back over your last year and you can probably identify quite a few of its visits that screwed up a plan or two.

And here's the main thing - if you're trying to win at Alien Chess, it's not about grinding one board to death. It's about dealing well with many boards in rapid succession. Who left each board better than they came to it? Who handled both "good" and "bad" positions? You add up how many improvements you made to how many boards — that’s your “long term impact”, your score as a leader. That's the game you're playing when you work at FB. That's Alien Chess.

Once I got it and accepted what game I was in, it completely changed my mindset. I realized that the little green Alien, while so frustrating, is the magic of what makes this place (and tech more broadly) so special and so impactful. I understood that when the new, messy boards pop up - that’s when my leadership is needed the most. 

Instead of honing my strategy to predict or prevent change, I realized I need to get better at the skills most important for Alien Chess:

• ACCEPT that the Alien is here to stay: a key part of success in tech and at FB is to first recognize that this is the game. There will always be changes. Talk to anyone who’s been here a while, or has worked in similar environments. The Alien has come around regularly, and continues to do so. It’s not the Alien’s fault: this is the game we agreed to play when we joined and doubly so again when we began to lead. One must accept this for one’s own wellbeing.
• DETECT Alien visits: We must recognize when the board has changed; if you miss it, it will cost you. Sure, it’s easy on a chessboard — but our boards are complex and made of humans and orgs and external actors and products and tech. Sometimes the changes smack you right in the face. But quite often, having good “peripheral vision” to see the Alien subtly approaching is a big advantage: having a great system for collecting updates, having relationships and feedback skills so that people tell about issues early, thinking about problems at your manager’s or leader’s level and not just your own.
• ADAPT quickly: Once you see the change, quicker reaction times are at a premium. Adapting is a different skill than doing. How do you get faster at adapting? You need advice from others who’ve seen a similar board before. You need to quickly identify which of your habits or processes need to change, and A/B test new ones. You need to master domain transfer: translating skills and habits from one area of expertise to a new domain that has been thrust upon you. Most of our best leaders are rather quick learners.

It might be tempting to run away from a bad board. But be aware: whatever board you move to, the Alien will just mess that one up too. Unless you move to some slow moving industry. Like Mid-Century Teak Furniture.

The thing is, it’s the Alien’s visits that give us an opportunity to become great leaders. In truth, if the board is already pretty good, most competent people will do quite well on it. It’s “easy” to build or lead a great product with a complete team, product-market-fit, some tailwinds, and some good tech with no debt. But a whole lot of daylight opens up between people when the harder boards arrive — especially if they arrive suddenly. Candidly, most of my best learning and most of my upwards leaps in my career here came only after the Alien visited with such a horrific turd of a board that I was needed to step up or step in (sometimes as a desperation move by the upper management).

On occasion, we’d all curse the Alien’s name, if we knew it. But it’s the fact that we’re playing Alien Chess that makes working at this company so exciting, so rewarding, so new and full of learning. I would’ve never lasted my 13 years here plodding and grinding through one normal board.

Go forth and may the boards be with you.